Lips
by Craft Rose
Summary: Hermione and Draco share a moment in the corridor. (Eighth year, possible one-shot).


**A/N: This one came to me randomly. Hope you like it!**

* * *

"Granger?"

Hermione lifted her gaze from her Transfiguration essay, her eyebrows bouncing upwards as she found Malfoy standing there, on the other side of the study table. "Er … yes?" she uttered, after a second or two of silence.

Bookbag in tow, he tightened his hold on the shoulder strap, an anxious twitch on his bottom lip. "Would you mind if I sat down?"

There was a burst of whispers and curious looks amongst those around them in the library. Given that it was nearing exam time, every table and every corner of the library was full. The scratch of Quills, the turning of pages and the hiss and crackle of the fireplaces were the only sounds within those walls that were allowed. The only sounds which Hermione had paid any attention to within the past hour so so.

She stared at Malfoy as though he'd gone mad, not a word of response coming to mind.

They were part of the eighth year group that term. Two out of a group of ten, not including Harry or Ron, or any of the others. Ginny and Luna should have been there, but they'd opted out of the final year as well, choosing instead to work and travel and get on with life after the war.

At times she felt lonely, being there without her closest friends, but she always had Crookshanks to keep her company. And the boys wrote often.

As for Malfoy, he wasn't alone. He had Nott. The brainy, introverted boy from Slytherin who had always been relatively polite to those around them, even if they belonged to Gryffindor.

Quickly snapping out of her thoughts, Hermione popped a look over Malfoy's shoulder as a fast-approaching Madam Pince came rushing over, undoubtedly due to the ruckus.

"Shit —" the brunette blurted, hurriedly motioning for Malfoy for sit down before they were told to leave.

Not once in her time at Hogwarts had she ever been kicked out of the library. And she'd no plans to change that. Not when exams were around the corner.

Following her line of vision, Malfoy's eyes widened, a similar train of thought entering his mind.

In a great hurry, he plopped down on the nearest chair, grabbing a book out of Hermione's stack and turning swiftly to a random page as Madam Pince made a bee-line directly towards them.

Narrowing her eyes at them, the librarian came to a halt roughly ten feet away, simply hovering there a moment as if waiting for a reason to remove them.

Hermione fixed her gaze downward, pretending to focus on her essay whilst hoping to Merlin the librarian would leave already. It was difficult enough to revise and to do her school work without the snooty, older witch breathing down her neck.

If Pince hated children and younger people so much, surely a career outside of education would have suited her better.

Briefly meeting eyes with Hermione, the Slytherin boy sitting across from her gave her a look as if to ask if the coast were clear. The moment Pince turned to leave, the loud echo of her footsteps fading off into the quiet, Hermione nodded to Malfoy, discreetly.

They relaxed at the same time, the tension in their muscles tapering away. In that exact moment, the other students glanced over, continuing to whisper to amongst one another. Quieter this time.

Hermione paid them no mind, instead fixing her attention across the table. Stomach tightening at the sight of him, she wondered to herself what he was playing at.

For the past eight months, they'd successfully avoided each other, taking to separate parts of the castle and focusing only on their studies. No teasing, no glaring, not a drop of animosity between them. The only times she really saw him were in class and in the Great Hall. Though he skipped out on most meals anyway. Particularly feasts when the Great Hall was especially crowded. She figured he wanted to avoid the stares, slip into the shadows with hopes that they'd all just forget. Having had her own experience of unwanted attention, she knew more than anyone there was no running from it.

With a deep breath Hermione brushed all that aside, fixing her attention back on her school work as Malfoy looked across at her.

For a long moment, he said nothing, simply looking as she dipped her Quill into a pot of ink and carried on writing.

It was only when she accidentally tipped the pot over that she noticed.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake …" she hissed under breath, grabbing at the parchment and the books that were in the way only to find that she was too late. The ink had seeped into everything, including her hands and sleeves.

In all the chaos she blinked across at Malfoy, catching his inquiring and attentive gaze.

For whatever reason, he didn't look away. In fact he only stared longer, deeper at her as the back of her neck began to prickle with heat.

"Miss Granger!" someone shrieked, the outrage in their voice giving them away.

Hermione glanced to the left, her stomach lurching as the librarian came bustling over. "Madam Pince," she blurted. "I-I didn't mean to — it was an — the ink just —"

Swiftly grabbing the ink pot from the table, Pince took one, hard look at the label, the turbulence in her eyes quickly intensifying. "You _foolish_ girl!" the librarian spat, snapping her focus back to Hermione. "Out! Get out of my library before you destroy anything else!"

"D-destroy?" the girl repeated, her voice breaking as she instinctively glanced around, every pair of eyes in the vicinity pointed directly at her. "I-I can remove the ink. It-it won't take a moment."

"You certainly can't!" Madam Pince shouted at her, shoving the emptied ink pot in her face.

Darting a look at the label, Hermione felt it like a kick in the gut.

The ink was unremovable. Utterly permanent. There was neither a spell nor a potion in the world that could remove it. Once it touched paper, there it would remain.

Hermione swallowed the anxious lump in her throat, looking again at the librarian as she pointed her long, spindly arm towards the door.

"Out!" Pince shouted again. "Now!"

Immediately dropping her gaze to the floor, the younger witch gathered her things from the table, her chair legs screeching loudly against the wooden floors as she pushed back, rising. Without an ounce of her usual fight left in her, she quietly took hold of her bookbag, slinging it over her left shoulder and holding it all in as she slowly made her way through the tables of onlookers and out of the library.

Her footsteps echoed loudly behind her, making the skin of her neck prickle again, but in a much different way than before.

 _What am I going to do?_ she asked herself, coming to a stop when she'd walked far enough away. Slamming her eyes closed in order to block the pool of warmth which had suddenly flooded her lower lash line, she stood there in the middle of the long, empty corridor. Every ounce of strength that had carried her through the term, alone, swiftly fall apart to reveal the parts of her that she'd kept hidden all these months.

It wasn't that Madam Pince had shouted at her in front of everyone.

It wasn't that she was completely alone, terrified for what she was going to do outside of school, and nowhere near ready to sit her exams.

It was everything.

All of it crashing down on her at once in a way she hadn't felt in years. Not since she'd run off to the girls bathroom in first year, utterly friendless and lost and insufferable to those around her. It was a feeling she'd nearly forgotten. A feeling that grappled at her insides so fiercely, she didn't immediately hear the footsteps.

The long, quick strides that were echoing closer from behind.

It was only as she turned around, wiping the tears from her cheeks that she caught sight of him, a short gasp tearing through her lips as the tall, grey-eyed Slytherin slid to an abrupt stop, barely a foot away.

Dressed in his weekend robes of plain black, the young man swallowed firmly, his Adam's apple plunging the length of his throat as he simply looked to her, wordlessly. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed from all the running, but his hair was in perfect condition. Coiffed to the side, the hanging torches casting a warm, fiery glow over the white blond.

Hermione stepped back, feeling for her wand on pure instinct.

In response to that, Malfoy stepped back as well, slowly and carefully lifting his arms up as if to show her that he meant no harm.

That only confused her more.

She narrowed her eyes at the Slytherin, trying her hardest to hold in the rest of her tears. The last thing she wanted was to cry in front of _him_. The fact that she was crying at all, made her furious. She'd helped defeat the darkest, most powerful wizard to have lived in recent history, and yet — the school librarian had somehow managed to reduce her to tears over spilled ink.

What was the sense in that?

Angrily wiping her eyes, she forced out the only words that came to mind. "Wh-what in Merlin's name do you want?"

Malfoy blinked his eyes a notch wider, as if taken aback. At a momentary loss for what to say, he slowly parted his lips after, utterly unaware of how different he looked when he wasn't twisting them into a smirk or a frown of any sort.

"That was … that was rubbish back there," he uttered, hesitantly. "What she said to you."

The anger in Hermione's eyes turned quickly into confusion. "Wh-what are you playing at?" she asked, not an ounce of patience left in her. "Tell me truthfully."

"Nothing," the Slytherin blurted, as though he actually meant it. "Honestly, nothing. I-I just — I don't know."

"You don't know?" she repeated, accusingly.

He gulped, loudly. "Believe me, Granger, I'm equally as confused by this as you are."

"As a matter of fact, I _don't_ believe you."

On queue, he scowled at her. "Suit yourself. Next time I won't chase after you."

"What in the world makes you think I want you to chase you after me?" Hermione snapped. "In case it isn't obvious, Malfoy, I'd rather be chased by likes of your Uncle Fenrir than by _you_."

The sound of that name brought a quickness to his chest, an overwhelming rage that he couldn't control.

Rushing towards the witch within seconds, he grabbed her by the collar of her robes, scrunching the material in his fists as he backed her into a wall.

"Do it," she panted, uncaringly. "Hit me."

The look in his eyes was seething. "You think that low of me, do you?"

Chest pounding, Hermione peeled her lips apart, all sense of control having escaped her. "Hit me like your Aunt Bellatrix told you to."

Malfoy blinked, shocked into a silence for a few seconds before he let go of her, the collar of her robes bunched up and askew. "Get out of my sight," he said to her, sharply.

She laughed, humourlessly. "Put all that behind us, have we?"

Still just a few inches away, he fell silent, only glaring at her.

"You've got a lot of nerve chasing after me," she furthered. "I'm sure the others have bought into the act. But you don't fool me for a second, Draco Malfoy. I know exactly the kind of person you are." Staring up at him as if just as tall, and just as dominating, Hermione narrowed her eyes into the deepest, most seething glare she could manage, and spoke the only words that felt right. "You are nothing but a foul, loathsome, evil little cock —"

She choked on her words as he pinned her to the wall again, knocking the wind right out of her.

"Why are you doing this?" Malfoy demanded.

The witch tensed, looking to him bitingly. "Doing what?"

He shoved her harder against the wall, his fingers digging into her shoulders and his breath hard, fast. Were it not for the tangle of pain and confusion in his eyes, she'd have actually believed that he'd meant to harm her.

"You're trying to provoke me," he uttered, tightening his hold. "What's the matter with you? Are you that starved for attention?"

She glowered at him.

"Friends not writing back quickly enough for you?"

"Don't you dare speak of my friends."

"Try and stop me," he countered.

Hermione simply breathed, dropping a look at the fists that were holding her in place. The points of his knuckles had drained of colour, turning white from how tight he was gripping her by the shoulders. In her right mind she knew better than to allow herself to stumble into a situation like this. Backed into a wall, barely an inch between their bodies and the glow of the torches growing dimmer.

The prickling sensation returned to her neck, traveling all the way down her spine as she blinked up at him.

His breathing had shallowed, and his eyes were dark, shrouded in a feeling that made her shiver all over. Whatever it was he was thinking, whatever thoughts were racing through his mind as he had her pinned to the wall, he made it clear the moment he dragged his gaze from her eyes to her lips.

 _Merlin._

 _The prick wants to kiss me._

Sensing that she'd caught on, he abruptly released her, taking two, three steps back as she looked at him from across, frozen in place.

She didn't dare move.

The larger part of her subconscious was shouting at her, urging her to just walk away already, but the rest of her simply wouldn't allow it. She was motionless, her back pressed firmly against the wall in exactly the way he'd left her. Ink stains all along her sleeves, and hands, and probably her face, she knew she looked ridiculous, but she'd never have guessed it by the way he was looking at her.

 _He's still thinking about it,_ she realized, cheeks blazing with heat. _About kissing me._

Swallowing hard, she waited a long time. For him to go away, to come to his senses, perhaps. He seemed to be doing the same, hovering there in complete silence, waiting for the brunette to pull out her wand and curse him into oblivion. Part of her wanted to, and she probably would have if not for the deeper, slightly less sensible part of her that wanted something else.

In the quiet that followed, the tall, grey-eyed Slytherin came towards her, slowly.

One step, two steps, three steps.

She'd ample time to walk away, but she didn't. Instead she waited there, allowing her eyes to fall shut as he stopped within inches of her. Pressing her body flush against the wall, she breathed in and out, loudly and deeply before he came in closer.

Slowly, he brought a hand to her cheek, cupping it whilst dragging his thumb down the middle of her lips, separating them.

It gave her chills.

Heart racing, she sucked in a soft, short breath just moments before it finally happened.

Malfoy dragged his hand down her body, taking her by the wrists and pinning them to the wall as he tilted his head down and captured her lips in a kiss.

To her complete and utter surprise, she didn't burst into flames. Gasping into it, she slowly began to kiss back, navigating the mess of thoughts in her head before they vanished. Every last one of them. She wasn't sure what she imagined it would be like to kiss him, but she was surprised by it either way.

His lips were soft and warm, and he kissed her deeply, his entire body reacting to her in ways she had never considered. Releasing her wrists, he lifted her up, and she quickly held on, running her hands through the roots of his hair and grazing her tongue against his as the realization finally hit her.

 _What am I doing?_

Seemingly on the same wavelength, Malfoy pulled away to catch his breath, the pair of them just looking to each other, panting for breath before they heard footsteps around the corner.

In a matter of seconds they completely separated, Hermione dashing off in the direction that she had been heading in earlier whilst Malfoy remained where he was, collecting his bookbag from the floor as a large group of seventh year Gryffindors came bustling past.

The echo of their chatter filled every inch of the brunette's chest cavity as she raced away, shutting her eyes and resisting the urge to look back, because doing so would have made it real.

It wasn't real.

It can't have been.

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry, Hermione. It was definitely real lmao. What do you think?**


End file.
